The time has come for an American president to help reconnect the United States Supreme Court with the rest of the country. It is time for Barack Obama to nominate a candidate to the Court who has political or financial experience as well as legal chops; time or him to throw into the ideological vipers’ nest there a person who hasn’t spent the past few decades life-tenured and decked out in a black robe.

In the wake of the announcement today of Justice John Paul Stevens’s retirement, all of the eight remaining justices came to the High Court from the lower federal appeals courts. So did Stevens. He served on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals before he was nominated by President Gerald Ford. The last Justice to leave before him, David H. Souter, had served on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals before being appointed by President George H.W. Bush. You have to go back to Lady Justice herself, Sandra Day O’Connor, to find a Justice who didn’t just graduate from one federal court to another.I have nothing against federal appeals court judges—some of them are quite bright and almost all of them are honorable—but it’s fairly clear that the Court needs a different sort of voice inside those “conference” rooms and from the bench. The Citizens United ruling this past winter is only the latest symptom of this detachment disorder—the justices simply forgetting what it was like to live an untenured life. That’s why the president should select a sitting governor—Jennifer Granholm of Michigan—with a bright past as a prosecutor and attorney general. Or someone with vast business experience—Elizabeth Warren—who did not attend one of the elite law schools that routinely populate the Court.

Ironically, one of the so-called “front-runners” for Stevens’s seat on the Court would have been a federal appeals court judge had Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) allowed her 1999 nomination, by President Bill Clinton, to be put for a vote. But Elena Kagan never got that vote, or a hearing—the Republicans refused—and so off she went to become the first female dean of the Harvard Law School. She’s now solicitor general—no bean bag—and I suppose that Team Obama could portray her as judicial “outsider.” But that would be a tough sell in an age where even easy sells tank before our very eyes.

No matter whom the president selects, the nominee shouldn’t be just another veteran judge who will hide behind ethics canons to avoid answering questions before the Senate Judiciary Committee sometime this summer. It shouldn’t be just another drone who’s been on the public dole for the past few decades. Last year’s confirmation succeeded, in part, because Sonia Sotomayor’s personal story tagged her in the eyes of most people as someone they might run into at the store. Trust me when I tell you: even if you have ever run into a federal appeals court nominee in the store, you’ve never known it.

Justice Stevens retires as the last member of the Court to have served in World War II. If the President wants to be true to the man’s noble, spirited legacy, he will replace Stevens with someone whose recent career has experienced the rough and tumble of ordinary life. He will replace him with someone who hasn’t spent the last few years reading legal briefs. The Court needs a shake-up—in more ways than one—and the president now has the opportunity to give it just that.